The curse didn't work on Meemo, and Arin was thrilled. According to ~, it seemed like Meemo was a loophole that the curse didn't catch on to. ~ thought it was because Meemo was an animal.

"Where did you get Meemo, anyways?" Arin asked her.

"Your stepfather was selling her. I bought her."

"Why was Jitae selling Meemo?" Arin asked with a pout, feeling a little disappointed that her stepfather seemed to have given up hope she would return, and was selling off her pet.

"Maybe it's too painful for him to keep her. She probably reminds him of you. You have to understand how hard it must be for him, losing his wife and his step-daughter all in one day."

"Because of his mother!" Arin scoffed. "He probably knows that I'm cursed, but he didn't make any effort to un-curse me."

"Your curse is irreversible, Ar."

"Still," Arin murmured, "this is all his fault. I'm glad Meemo's out of his clutches."

-

Arin hated this.

Why couldn't it just end?

Why was she still alive and on this godforsaken roof?

And why did her nosy neighbor have to be there to take the hit for her fall? She was barely injured, but he, on the other hand, clearly needed immediate attention. The fall had twisted his ankle, scraped his elbows, knocked his head, and broke his glasses so he couldn't see anything.

She felt a sense of responsibility to help him, so had to postpone her self-inflicted death. She dreaded the extra moments of life she had to endure in her despair. He was just trying to do what he thought was right, but she wished he could have just left her alone.

She helped Woozi back down the stairs, putting his arms around her shoulders and carrying some of his weight in the descent. She didn't say anything, and neither did he. He was either in too much pain or too much shock. Perhaps it was a combination of both, and Arin didn't blame him. When she first witnessed magic play out before her very eyes, she was speechless too.

When they finally made it to his apartment on the eighth floor, Arin helped him onto his bed and put ice on his swollen ankle and bumped head. She also brought out the first aid kit she knew was in every apartment.

As swiftly as she could, she cleaned and bandaged both his elbows, then used a wet towel to clean the blood off his hair and neck. Woozi kept his eyes closed all throughout, only wincing in pain throughout.

"The sheets are dirty now," Arin said, pointing at the blood stains on the satin covers. "I can clean them for you if you want."

"You can't do that if you're dead," he murmured. That was the first thing he said since they got there. "You need immediate therapy," he continued, clearly shaken. "I can get you in touch with someone right now, and you can talk it out on the phone with them, whatever it is."

"I don't think therapy will help me," Arin replied.

"That's what people who need therapy would say," he scoffed back at her..

Perhaps she did need a therapist, but she couldn't possibly speak to one, for the therapist's sake. To speak to a therapist would mean she would need to learn that person's name.

"Could you please just bring my spare pair of glasses," he asked. "They're in the dresser somewhere..."

Arin didn't reply to him, but she did find the extra pair of round glasses in his dresser, which she handed to him.

He put them on, and immediately took out his phone from his pocket and began to tap away on his screen, clearly searching for something to do with therapy.

"I don't need therapy," she reiterated.

"Shh," he snapped at her. "This is not a negotiation."

Arin bit her lower lip, feeling her heart skip a beat. He seemed quite distraught by the fact she wanted to end her life. He cared, and in some weird way, she liked that he cared.

It made her feel happy, and more fond of him than ever before.

"Okay, here are a bunch of suicide hotlines I found," he said, eyes fixated on the screen. "I'll make the call and let you talk."

"I'm not talking to anyone," she told him, shaking her head.

"Then I'll call the police," he threatened.

He didn't understand what was happening. She wished she could just explain it all to him in a minute, but she couldn't. Her problem was not one that a suicide counselor could help her with. The problem wasn't in her head; it was tied to her identity in the form of an irreversible curse. Therapy is not going to help her.

His threat to call the police frightened her. She didn't want to be stopped or to fight anyone off.

Thinking quick, she snatched his glasses and the phone from his hand and rushed out of the bedroom. On her way out, she threw his phone and his glasses on the sofa in the living room, left the apartment, and ran down the stairs.

With a twisted ankle and bad eyesight, it would take him a while before he could call the police, which gave her the time to flee and find her death before he got to her.

She reached the lobby of the building and opened the front gate, ready to dash out of the building, never to return again. Instead, she ran into an invisible wall which made her fall back on the floor.

She cursed under her breath and grunted. Of course she couldn't leave. The building was enchanted to keep her in.

For the first time ever, she felt trapped and not protected because of ~'s enchantment. It just reaffirmed what the scared foreign boy she had met outside said about her, about Hyojung. "She's trapping you in here so she can control you."

To get out, Arin had to ask ~ to lift the enchantment. She reached into her pocket for her phone, thinking maybe she could lie and tell ~ she needed toilet paper or something, but the phone had run out of charge a long time ago, and she didn't have the patience to charge it.

Why was it so hard to die? she thought, on the verge of tears.

A sudden "Hi!" startled her out of crying. It was the perky, reluctant voice of the foreign boy she met earlier.

Arin froze.

"May I please come in?" he asked, just one step outside the open door that Arin had failed to pass through.

Arin remembered that he had come into the lobby before, following one of the tenants. It meant that the enchantment didn't keep him out. He could come in if he wanted to.

"No," she stammered, shaking her head, frightened.

"Please don't be scared of me. I just want to help you, honest."

Arin shook her head. She didn't want help. She just wanted this all to end. And if she couldn't go outside to make that happen, she was going to do it inside.

When the elevator dinged and the door opened to reveal a limping Woozi, she knew that he was going to make that hard for her.

When he saw her, he let out an audible sigh of relief and limped toward her as fast as he could. He had found his glasses.

"I called psychiatric emergency services. They're on their way," he said, much to Arin's growing despair. "I'm not going to let you do this," he added before collapsing on the floor beside her, hissing in pain.

He was barefoot, his swollen ankle now inflamed and probably in much worse condition because he chose to run after her instead of letting it properly rest in ice like he should have.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked him, feeling guilty and also somewhat touched.

"Why? Because I don't want you to die, that's why. Now please don't run away and make me get up again," he said, cringing in pain.

She didn't want him to get up again, and so she didn't move. She just stared at him.

Woozi turned to the foreign boy standing outside the door. "Who are you?"

"I... I'm a friend," he answered; he looked just as interested to know who Woozi was.

Moments later, Woozi recognized him. He pointed an accusing finger at him: "You're the guy! The guy from the security footage!"

The boy's eyes widened, startled by the statement. "What security footage?"

Woozi turned to Arin with a curious look in his eye, as if asking her who this person was. But Arin knew anymore than he did.

When Woozi wasn't getting anything from her, he turned back to the boy and said: "All I know is that your actions caused deep distress for Arin..."

The boy didn't heed what Woozi was saying. Instead, he turned to Arin with narrowed eyes. "Do you know his name?" the boy directed the question at Arin. He seemed legitimately concerned.

Woozi stopped talking.

She did know his name. It was "Woozi," her nosy neighbour who cared for her and helped her and was kind to her even when she was unkind to him. It was dangerous how much she liked him.

"Woozi," she said out loud, as if to test it, to see if it would work this time, although she somehow knew that it wouldn't. This person was immune to her curse for some reason, and she didn't understand why.

The boy bit his lower lip and turned to Woozi. "For your own sake, Woozi," the boy told him, "leave her alone."

"If I leave her alone, she'll kill herself. So I'd rather not have that death on my neck, thank you very much!" he said, crossing his arms and glaring at her.

"Oh Arin... you're not really thinking about that, are you?" the boy asked with a sad look in his eyes. He seemed disappointed, but not surprised. "Please don't. I know everything seems to be going wrong, but I can help you understand what's happening, and I promise, that clarity will help you. Just give me a chance to speak with you, please."

"Speak with her, then," Woozi said. "She's right here, listening."

"I want to speak with her alone," the boy clarified.

"For all I know, you could be another one of those people manipulating her. Seems she's got a lot of those in her life."

"And what are you, her guardian angel?" the boy replied with a scoff. "Let her make her own decisions. But what I want to tell her, I have to say to her alone, and she knows that."

They both turned to her, waiting for her to make that decision.

Even in that moment, she felt tempted to reach for her phone and ask ~ what that decision should be. She realized then just how micro-managed her life had been since she came to work in this building. She couldn't even make her own decisions anymore. Even when Jeonghan was dying on the roof, she had to call ~ to ask what she would do.

Even now, she hoped that Woozi would also tell her what to do, but he wasn't. He just glanced at her with an inquisitive look in his eyes, waiting for her.

He was right to say that she was being manipulated. She was a puppet who had no control of her own destiny since the moment she decided to go with ~ that one fateful night after the concert. She leaned on ~ and did everything she was told, because she didn't want to take responsibility for the volatile and dangerous person that she was. She let ~ take the reins to her life, because she didn't trust herself with them.

She really was pathetic.

Arin didn't want to revel in self-hate anymore though. Doing that only led her to despair and caused other people inconvenience, as Woozi's swollen ankle so clearly demonstrated.

In that moment, she resolved to stop being the person she hated so much: weak, dependent, anxious, and depressed. She needed to start paving her own way, making her own decisions, and the only way she could do that was if she knew what the hell was going on.

With shaky resolve, Arin lifted her head to the foreign boy still standing outside the door. "Please tell me everything you know."

"Well, do it in here in the lobby then," Woozi said. "I'll just step outside and wait. Emergency services are still on their way, for your information." With that, he tried to force himself up, wincing in pain as he put weight on his bad foot.

Arin was quick to react to that. She stood up and took his hand to help him off the floor.

"You should go back and put your foot in ice," she told him, but he didn't listen to her. He shook his head and limped past her out the door, taking a seat on the staircase outside, out of earshot.

The foreign boy finally stepped through the door himself, and drew closer to Arin.

"The first thing you need to know, Arin, is that there are curses, but there are also blessings," he said in a whisper. "With every evil, there is good on the offset, and vice versa. That's how magic works. Unfortunately, you've been cursed. But others, like me for example, have been blessed. I'm just like you: I am no mage, but a mage did bless me with a very cool ability."

The boy cleared his throat, as if preparing to recite something:

Blessed be this boy as long as he grows,
And may he see love wherever he goes.

"That's my blessing," the boy said to Arin. "It's kind of like yours, but probably shorter. It works just like a curse does, except it's a good thing. But my blessing didn't really play out the way my mage intended it to: she wanted people to love me wherever I go, but instead, the blessing made me see love wherever I go, literally."

The boy then turned his head to Woozi, sitting outside on the staircase, and then back to Arin. "Do you know the 'Red Thread of Fate'?" he asked her.

Arin nodded. She knew about it from Minghao, who often talked about these spiritual things. According to this myth, everyone is tied to their fated loved one by an invisible red thread around their finger.

"Well, I see that thread for everyone, so I literally see 'love' wherever I go. Usually, it's nice and refreshing to see two people who are tied to one another, together, in the same place, but with you, it's different." The boy looked again toward Woozi.

Arin narrowed her eyes at what he was implying.

"You and Woozi are connected," the boy clarified. "And so even if you don't love him now, you will in the future. So please Arin, stay away from him. Or it will end badly for both of you."

-

A/N: hi everyone. I'm so sorry for the delay. Corona got my local library (i.e. my writing spot) closed, and kept me stuck in a small home with 8 people, and it has been so hard to find the right environment to write. But I'm getting myself into a routine now and it's working! I'll try to get the next updates one week apart max from now on.

I really do love writing this story, and I will never abandon it until I finish!

Also as I write I learn a lot about what's working and not working with my storytelling. One thing I see is that there's too much unexplained mystery in this story, and I feel like I should tone it down a bit. As the author, I know the answers so it's ok for me, but as readers, I assume it's a bit confusing for you guys. I would love your honest critical opinion about this, to improve a bit in the telling of this story (and future stories as well!)

Thank you so much for your patience and for reading! <3